


In Your Darkness, Find Me

by morganoconner



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Blindness, Established Relationship, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-26
Updated: 2012-05-26
Packaged: 2017-11-06 00:55:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganoconner/pseuds/morganoconner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson's always had a knack for fixing Clint's life whenever it goes to hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Your Darkness, Find Me

He hadn't noticed at first.

To be fair, he'd had a lot to deal with. There was the mind-rape detox. Then there was the battle. Then there was Fury telling them to get gone for a while. Then there was…

There was the empty space where Phil should have been.

Then there was the pain. The guilt.

So Clint hadn't noticed. Or maybe he had, but he'd told himself it didn't matter. After everything, maybe he'd just figured he deserved to be a little uncomfortable. Deserved a hell of a lot more than that besides, but maybe it was the start of some sort of penance.

Anyway.

All other justifications aside, when he'd been under Loki's spell, everything in his vision had had a blue-ish tinge over it, like a weird fog. In the aftermath, after Nat's 'cognitive recalibration', that hadn't gone away immediately. Whether it was his mind still detoxing or just his own imagination, Clint had no idea, but it had been there for a long time after. So the blurred, shadowed moments were shoved to the back of his mind as part of the same. He could still see, could still shoot an arrow and hit the mark every time, so what difference did it make right then with a battle raging through New York City?

Getting the back of his head slammed into the pavement by one of the Chitauri soldiers probably hadn't helped, and maybe at that point, he would have mentioned it to the doctors at S.H.I.E.L.D., the flickering darkness and floaty things in his vision or the fact that he could barely see at all out of one eye.

Except.

Except Natasha told him about Phil on the way back to the helicarrier, and after that, the vision in the eye that was mostly working had gone gray and his head had been spinning and he'd been too busy feeling like he was suddenly drowning to care about something as stupid as a slight vision problem that probably didn't mean anything anyway.

Medical had checked them over, of course. But it was a cursory check at best, considering how many agents they were still treating who were a lot worse off, and Clint had still been reeling from the news about Phil, and anyway, Fury had been damn anxious at that point to get the Avengers away before the Council could descend. And in all that, it just…didn't matter.

Hell, nothing had mattered.

So now, two days later, sitting on the floor of the dusty apartment he and Phil shared in secret for two years, he could only stare unseeingly across the room and wonder just what the hell he'd been thinking. If Phil were here, he'd have been giving Clint so much hell right now.

But. Phil _wasn't_ here, that was the whole damn problem.

Christ, he was such a mess.

Clint's hand, usually the steadiest thing about him, was shaking when he reached up to the bedside table and groped around for his phone. He had never been so grateful as he was right this second that Phil had insisted on putting Fury on speed-dial #1.

Whatever the director was thinking when he answered with a brusque, "Yes, Agent Barton?" he didn't let it filter into his voice. So Clint was very careful not to let the panic he felt creep into his. "Yeah, Director Fury, sir? I, uh. I know you told us to disappear for a while, but. I've got kind of a situation." He swallowed hard. "I think I need some help, sir."

* * *

"Detached retinas," Clint echoed numbly, hands clenching and unclenching over the starched medical-issued bed sheets like he could do a damn thing but lie here and listen to Fury and the doctor talk at him. "What does that even mean?"

"It means," Fury said, and Clint could at least appreciate his no-nonsense tone for once, "that whatever Loki did left a lot of things inside you…vulnerable. More fragile than they should have been." There was a rustle of fabric, which Clint just _knew_ was Fury crossing his arms. "It means we're gonna get you prepped for surgery now, but there's no guarantees at this point."

Clint didn't close his eyes. It would have been a useless gesture anyway. "So this is probably permanent."

"We really just can't know," the doctor cut in. His nasally voice wasn't familiar, but then, Clint had never had an injury like this before in all his years at S.H.I.E.L.D. "In fact, even after the surgery, it could be weeks or even months before you regain your vision in either eye. It could be some time before we know anything for sure."

"Awesome." Clint lay back against the thin pillow and tried to calm his hummingbird-fast heartbeat. He had been in worse situations than this without panicking, he sure as hell wasn't gonna start losing it now.

But, God, he wished more than anything in the world that Phil were here. Phil, who always knew the exact right thing to say, who could calm Clint down with nothing more than a hand on his arm or a quiet word in his ear.

Well. At least blind, he wouldn't have to see that empty, aching space beside him anymore.

* * *

The worst part was the waiting. The surgery itself was fast, but after, they kept his eyes covered and kept him in bed (where he had to stay face-down on a specially made pillow ninety-nine percent of the time), and Clint had nothing to do between bouts of eating and sleeping and guiding himself to the tiny bathroom. It left him entirely too much time to think, and thinking was the last thing he wanted to be doing right now. Thinking brought about the _whys_ and the _hows_ and the _what ifs_ , and those were all very dangerous questions.

Two weeks after the surgery, the bandages and patches were removed entirely and his eyes examined.

He still couldn't see a damn thing, but the doctor was quick to reassure him it could still take some time. Clint barely covered the snort, because he may be blind, but that didn't mean his hearing had suffered any, and there was no mistaking the disappointment in the doctor's voice. Even factoring in healing time, Clint clearly should have been able to see _something_.

God, the only thing he'd always been able to rely on were his eyes. Without them, without his perfect vision and even better aim, what good was he? What the hell would he do if he couldn't be an agent, an Avenger? Now that Phil was…gone, being an Avenger was all he had left; if he couldn't do that, _be_ that anymore, he had nothing.

He curled in on himself on the bed, not caring that he was still supposed to be lying facedown, not caring that the doctor was still trying to talk to him. He just wanted to sleep, to forget, to pretend…

The door opened, and for a second, Clint assumed the doctor had given up and was finally leaving him to his misery. But then a new voice spoke up, and the world just…stopped.

"Dr. Visnak, I believe Director Fury expressly told you that you were to wait to speak with Agent Barton until I could accompany you."

The voice was weak, hoarse like it hadn't been used much recently, but it was unmistakable. It was _impossible_.

Clint realized he'd stopped breathing.

"I…" There was a frantic shuffling sound. "Sir, I am sorry, but you only just woke three days ago, and my main concern was the well-being of my own patient. I did not think –"

"Yes, that much is obvious." Still that perfect dry wit, enough to bring tears to Clint's useless eyes. It wasn't…it couldn't be… "I suggest you leave before I decide I feel well enough to show you why I'm one of the top agents here at S.H.I.E.L.D, Dr. Visnak. You can explain to Director Fury later why you decided it wasn't important to follow his orders."

Clint didn't hear the scramble out the door that followed, because he had squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his face into the pillow and was repeating in his head, over and over, _It's a dream, I'm asleep, Phil is dead and he isn't coming back, I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming, I'm_ –

" _Clint_." The word was soft, more of a sigh than anything, and Clint wouldn't, _couldn't_ believe.

Shuffling footsteps came closer, and then the mattress shifted a little as a weight leaned against it and then slowly sat down. "No," Clint muttered into his pillow, clutching it like a lifeline. "I want to wake up now, god damn it. This isn't fair."

"You're awake," the voice, that impossible voice, told him. "Clint, I promise you're awake." A warm hand fell to his shoulder, and Clint clamped down hard on the sob that tried to crawl out of his throat.

"No, sir," he said. "I can't be. You're dead, and I don't believe in ghosts." It was the first time he'd said it aloud, the first real acknowledgement he'd made of it since Natasha had delivered the news, and it hurt just as much as he'd known it would. Would've been easier just to drive one of his own arrows through his chest.

"I was." The hand on his shoulder drifted into his hair, tugged gently as it carded through the thick strands. "For about fifty-seven seconds. And then I was in a coma until early Tuesday morning."

God, he wanted to believe _so badly_ , but things like this – good things, _impossibly_ good things – didn't happen to Clint Barton. Definitely not to a Clint Barton who had betrayed everything he cared about, who had been responsible for the deaths of so many good people.

"It wasn't your fault." A whisper, followed by the brush of lips against his temple.

The man beside him smelled like Phil Coulson just as much as he sounded like him. And he knew how to read Clint just as well as Phil ever had.

"Is this a trick?" Clint finally asked, his voice sounding very small all of a sudden to his own ears.

"No. No tricks. Not ever again, I swear it. I'll make Fury sign it in blood if it will help." There was a small, tired-sounding sigh. "He should have known better than to deceive you, of all people, like that. I'm sorry I couldn't come and set the record straight sooner."

Clint made a sound that was supposed to be a laugh, but came out more like a strangled sob. "I can't…" _I can't see. How can I believe it when I can't see you?_ He didn't know how to say the words, how to make Phil understand, but as it turned out, he didn't need to.

A gentle hand closed around his own, brought it up, and then Clint's fingers encountered the smooth skin of a cheek. He didn't need prompting to begin exploring, his hand moving over the contours of the face, so familiar, right down to the receding hairline and the lines between the brows. The slight bump in the bridge of the nose from when it was broken five years ago, the nearly invisible scar just above his chin from a knife fight two years before that, and it was Phil, it was really, honest-to-god _Phil_.

"Jesus Christ," Clint rasped, and then he proceeded to try to crawl into Phil, wrapping his arms around the man (gently, because now he could feel the thick bandages and the way one arm was strapped down to keep movement to a minimum) and burying his face against his neck and just holding on as close as he could.

Phil didn't say anything, just ran his free hand up and down Clint's spine and pressed gentle kisses into his hair. For a while, it was like the world was suddenly whole and perfect again, and Clint could forget about his eyes entirely.

Except that when Phil finally pulled away a little, his thumb traced along one of Clint's closed eyelids, and his voice sounded a little broken when he finally spoke again. "I should have been here. I wish you hadn't had to go through this alone."

Clint's jaw clenched against the fear that rose like bile in his throat. He kept his eyes closed because it was easier to pretend that way, and he was, maybe, a little bit of a coward sometimes. Grabbing Phil's hand, he pressed a kiss to the knuckles, held on tightly. "Not alone now, right? That's what counts."

And it really did. Because Phil was here, and for the first time since he'd opened his eyes to that all-consuming darkness, Clint felt like he could breathe. Like he could get through this, even if… He swallowed, cutting that thought off at the pass. Tried for something like their normal humor. "I, uh. Don't think I'm gonna be up to field work anytime soon, though. I'm just sayin'. You're gonna have to find another way to keep me occupied, 'cause you know how I get when I'm bored."

"Hmm." A tiny bit of amusement crept into Phil's voice, and in his mind's eye, Clint saw the way his lips quirked whenever he was trying to hide a smile. "Well, we'll be here for a couple weeks, in any case." He sighed. "After that, you need to go back to laying low. The Council is looking for any Avengers they can find right now, and you in particular. I'm not going to let them lock you away." There was steel in Phil's voice, and the hand wrapped around Clint's was going to break bones if it clenched any tighter.

"Maybe…" Clint paused, swallowing again. "Maybe I should be –"

"I will do bodily harm to you if you finish that sentence, Agent Barton." And yeah, it was S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Agent Coulson speaking now, just as much as it was Clint's Phil. "The Council just wants something they can use as an excuse, and something to hold over Nick Fury's head. They want you as a scapegoat because they don't have anything else, and it's not happening. If I have to use every last breath in my body convincing you that what happened wasn't your fault, I will do so, do you understand me?"

"Yes, sir," Clint replied gruffly. He looked down, hoping to hide all of the things he knew were written on his face right now, but he was sure Phil saw them anyway. It's what Phil _did_.

"Good," Phil said. "So. When we finally get out of here, we're going to disappear for a while. A good long while, I think, because quite frankly even if not for the Council, I'm pretty annoyed with Director Fury, and I think he deserves to try running this place without my help for a while." A smirk entered into his tone. "Especially if he has to try wrangling your team again anytime soon."

Clint's heart swelled up like a balloon in his chest at the easy way Phil said _your team_. Like it was that easy, like he was still an Avenger, even now. Even without his eyes. Like he was and would continue to be a part of them, no matter what. And damn, he wanted to believe that. "Okay then," he forced himself to say, because anything else would be too much right now.

It occurred to him, though, that what he actually wanted to say was, _if it had been the choice before me, I would have traded my eyes for your life without question. I would have traded anything._ Because that's sort of what it felt like had happened. And he couldn't regret that. Team or no team, he had Phil back, and that's what he cared about the most.

But Phil wouldn't want to hear that, and Clint didn't know if he would ever be able to say it. So instead he simply asked, "So what happens after that?"

Phil leaned over, though it had to hurt him to do so, and pressed a kiss to Clint's lips, lingering there for a long moment. "We heal," he said quietly. "Together."


End file.
